Open letter to Hudson Soft

About a month ago I wrote up an email to Hudson Soft, makers of the Bomberman series of games, concerning their upcoming games for the Wii. A retail and WiiWare Bomberman title. As I haven’t gotten any reply, I’m posting the message publicly.

I have played the Bomberman games for their multiplayer mayhem for a long time, and I love the series. I’ve prefered the older sprite-based Bomberman games with levels non-distorted by perspective, but these new games will have support for eight players, something hard to get without forcing your friends to get DSes or a Sega Saturn.

I haven’t read anything reliable about how to connect to many players to one console, but so far it seems that you would need four Wiimotes and four GameCube controllers. To me there are way more dynamic solutions to getting eight players on screen, which is why I wrote this letter.

Hello Hudson Soft!

* If this doesn’t reach a person involved with the development of the WiiWare Bomberman game, please forward it if deemed worthy. Thanks! *

My name is Andreas Aronsson, and I just cannot stop myself from emailing you, all the way from Sweden too!

I have read that you are indeed making a classic-ish Bomberman game for the WiiWare service, and perhaps a retail game as well.
I was glad to read that it will support eight players on- and offline, but I was a bit concerned when people said it would require four Gamecube Controllers. It’s not that I don’t have that, just that they aren’t the slickest things to have connected to the Wii console.

Me and my friends often play Bomberman on vintage consoles, and now Bomberman ’93 on the Virtual Console, but we usually have to pass around the controllers.

My proposal is something I’ve thought of since I got my Wii last year. An idea how to make a massive Bomberman experience with the standard Wii hardware. You might be planning this already, but here goes.

Eight players could easily be achieved with the standard controllers:

Four players use the Wii Remotes

Four players use Nunchuks attached to the remotes.

A stick and two buttons should be enough for Bomberman, no? It would create a real physical bond between players as well!

That was my main concern, but lets go crazy for a bit.

Nunchuks could be replaced by Classical Controllers, if people have those. This also enables twelve players, as you can share a controller ala Micro Machines. Each player get a stick, a cross/face buttons and two shoulder buttons each, plenty!

Gamecube Controllers could also be added to add another four players, making it 16, but like the Classical Controllers they also have enough sticks and buttons to be shared (stick + cross) to get 20 players on screen at once… ! Which sure sounds like insanity to me.

Let us summarize.

Four players on Wii Remotes

Four players on the left side of Classical Controllers

Four players on the right side of Classical Controllers

Four players on the left side of Gamecube Controllers

Four players on the right side of Gamecube Controllers

Twenty players is probably not practical, but enabling some of these options would give people a ton of different possible configurations to get eight players in a local game. As an example: